All Iraq News reports
that US Ambassador to Iraq "Stephen Beecroft" (that's how he's billed
-- maybe he's finally dropped the three names) is praising the Baghdad
International Fair which just started. Al Mada notes the fair started Thursday and that the first Baghdad International Fair was in 1957 though it wasn't called that until 1964. Alsumaria notes this is the 39th Baghdad International Fair and that twenty countries are participating. Yang Lina (Xinhua) quotes
Nouri al-Maliki declaring, "Iraq is now the investment opportunity in
the region that everything here needs for reconstruction, particularly
its infrastructure."

Everything you need
here -- if what you need is no booze, if what you need is security
forces who do not obey the law they're supposed to enforce. In fact, here's a YouTube video of Nouri's forces executing someone on the spot.
Iraq, where there's so much corruption, you may not even notice the
bombings. Baghdad, infamous for kidnapping and killing foreigners. Or
maybe you'll be like Peter Moore and just suffer for years in captivity without being killed.

Nouri
attended the opening ceremony and then split. If you were Nouri, you
would too. That's a pathetic showing. And if you doubt it, consider the 8th Erbil International Fair was last month and had 23 countries participating. Poor, inept Nouri, always living in the shadow of the KRG. Hurriyet notes
that, despite sharing a border with Iraq, "not many Turkish firms
attended the event." It appears to be shaping up to be another Arab
League Summit type event -- where people grade on the pity scale and
say, "It's a success! Regardless of the fact that it accomplished litte
or even nothing, it's a success!" Poor Nouri, between his threats
against corporations and his authoritarian streak, there's little to
attract international investors to Baghdad.

And it's going to be evident for a prolonged period becauseDar Addustour notes
it's a ten day event. The KRG where there's, by comparison, safety.
Where religious zealots will not prevent your consumption of alcohol.
Where you aren't confined to a pen named the "Green Zone." And the KRG
already has a business image -- a strong one. Businesses don't fear
they're going to be ripped off. Of course Nouri has given Baghdad a
strong image as well -- as a contract-breaking center. And the only
thing worth less than a written contract with the Baghdad government is
Nouri's word.

Moving over to violence, Alsumaria reports
a roadside bombing just south of Mosul claimed the life of 1 contractor
who was killed "on the spot" according to source with the police. Alsumaria also reports that in Salahuddin Province a student was shot. All Iraq News notes that Turkish warplanes began bombing northern Iraq in the early morning hours today. Today's Zaman adds
that there are reports "that four Turkish F-16 jets struck the PKK
targets in the region." This is part of the ongoing struggle between
the Turkish government and the PKK. Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described the PKK in 2008,
"The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's
oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has
waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands
of Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's
largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration
straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of
imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While
Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order
to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these
are now at risk." Ofra Bengio (Minority-Opinion) offers this take today:

The
signs are not hard to read. Most dramatically, the traditionally
marginalized Kurds of Syria have found new energy in the cauldron of the
Syrian uprising and are now demanding a federal system in which they
would gain significant autonomy in a post-Assad Syria. The extremely
restive Kurds of Turkey are pressing for what they call democratic
autonomy. The Kurds of Iran, typically unremarked upon in the media,
are stirring beneath their blanket of obscurity. But most important of
all these are the Kurds of Iraq. Iraq was the epicenter of the Kurds'
great leap forward in the early 1990s: the establishment of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which is a euphemism for a de facto
Kurdish state. It is to the KRG experience that Iranian, Syrian and
Turkish Kurds increasingly look for lessons and guidance, and rightly
so.

This is an ongoing
struggle throughout the region. In Turkey, that gets resolved only by
recognition and equality of the Kurds. The Kurds there have been denied
inclusion and that's what's fueled the struggle. It's what's led to a
hunger strike. Ivan Watson and Gul Tuysuz (CNN) report,
"Turkey's government announced Friday that at least 682 inmates were
participating in a hunger strike in at least 67 prisons across the
country, but it insisted that no protesters were in critical condition."
Daren Butler (Reuters) explains,
"Jailed Kurdish militans on hunger strike in Turkey may start to die
within the next 10 days, Turkey's main medical association warend on
Thursday, saying the prime minister's dismissal of the protest as a
'show' risked hardening their resolve." Gareth Jenkins (Great Britain's Socialist Worker) reports:

Up to 200 people from Kurdish and Turkish organisations protested outside the Turkish embassy today, Friday.

The protest marked the 52nd day since 63 Kurds in Turkish prisons started a hunger strike. They have been joined by 600 others.

Some may be near death. Thousands of Kurds around Europe have gone on solidarity hunger strikes.

Kurds
make up roughly 30 per cent of the population in Turkey and have faced
decades of repression. Thousands of Kurds, including MPs and mayors, are
political prisoners.

Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdish nationalist party, the PKK, has been held in prison since 1999.

Mehmet
Aksoy from the Kurdish Federation told Socialist Worker, "We want
freedom for Öcalan, for there to be meaningful negotiations. And we want
an end to the ban on using Kurdish in the law courts and in schools.

"We
want the cries of the hunger strikers to be heard. We are here today to
call on the international community to pressure Turkey into meeting our
demands as the only way to bring a just and honourable peace."

The
KRG (three provinces in Iraq) are the closest to a Kurdish homeland.
As such, the government of Turkey has long been threatened by it, afraid
that the KRG would result in (louder) cries among Turkey's Kurdish
population for a section of Turkey to set up a homeland. UPI notes, "Turkey
will not condone a separate autonomous Kurdish government in Syria,
similar to the one in Iraq, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said." Hurriyet quotes
Erdogan stating, "We cannot let playing of such a scenario [Kurdish
autonomy] here [in Syria]. We told this to [KRG President Massoud]
Barzani too. We wanted him to know this." Whether he heard it or not, Emirates News Agency reports,
"His Highness General Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi
Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces has
received Masoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
who is on current visit to the UAE."

The
statements by Turkish government officials will not be surprising to the
KRG nor will they be all that important to the KRG either. There are a
number of issues, however, that are important to the KRG. For example,
the Kurdistan Regional Government notes Glen Campbell's BBC World Service News report:

Iraqi
Kurds in Britain have begun a campaign for the mass murder of their
people in Iraq in the late-1980s to be formally recognised as genocide.

At least 180,000 Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein's forces.

The justice4genocide campaign says many more died in atrocities carried out by regimes from the 1960s onwards.

It
is petitioning the UK government to declare the mass killing of Kurds
as a genocide and press the European Union and United Nations to do the
same.

Though not everyone may agree on genocide, there's this believe that everyone will agree on voting. Al Mada reports
that the United Nations is urging Iraqis to vote in the upcoming
provincial elections scheduled for April 20th currently. If UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler
really wants Iraqis to turn out for the provincial elections, he might
try working on a slogan -- something like, "Vote in the provincial
elections -- the only ones so far that the US government doesn't
overrule."